PMI's advanced certification now has a name, and it is APL
The PM Architect6 min readPMI News
On 22 October 2026, at the Global Summit in Detroit, PMI announced the Advanced Project Leader certification, APL for short. It describes it as a global certification for experienced project professionals, delivered through accredited organisational partners. If you hold the PMP or are preparing for it, you should know what has been written down and what has not.
In August we covered the little there was on the advanced certification PMI was piloting. Two months later there is an official page, requirements and an exam with a shape. Let’s take it piece by piece, separating what is confirmed from what is still in the fog.
What is now in writing
The official APL page asks for two things to qualify in the current release. The first is to hold, active and in good standing, one of three PMI certifications, the PMP, the PgMP or the PfMP. The second is to successfully complete an APL evaluation program at an organisation accredited by PMI. According to the same page, completing that program confirms you have demonstrated advanced performance leading complex, high-stakes projects or programs, and no further application, panel review or experience audit is required beyond identity and exam registration.
The exam has 60 questions and 120 minutes. It mixes technical knowledge questions, situational judgement questions and case studies, and you take it at a Pearson centre or online. It is offered in ten languages, among them Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and French. It covers eight competency domains weighted between 10 and 14 per cent, and leadership and influence, communication and collaboration, and risk and uncertainty management are the three that weigh 14. You can sit it up to three times in one year, and to keep it active you report 60 PDUs every three years.
The five steps are those on the official APL certification page and its accreditation page for organisations, consulted on 26 October 2026.
Where the accredited organisation comes in
This is the point that changes the reading most. PMI does not accredit the person, it accredits the process the organisation uses to evaluate its own people. The page for businesses says it in those words. The organisation keeps its evaluation methods, PMI reviews the program against criteria of fairness, rigour, consistency and alignment with global standards, and once it is accredited, the organisation identifies the employees who can sit the exam.
Today eligibility is only available through organisations accredited by PMI. If you work independently, or at a company without a program for evaluating advanced practitioners, there is no door for you for now.
The page itself presents it as a certification where recognition is earned from your peers and not just from an exam. That phrase strikes me, because it describes an old craft. A stone arch does not stand on the strength of one voussoir, it stands because each stone leans on the ones beside it, and the one that crowns the arch only finds its place once the others are already carrying weight. APL works in a similar way. Your exam is the last stone, but before that someone in your own organisation, who has watched you work, has to have said you are ready.
Is it the same certification as in August?
PMI does not say so, and it is better not to say it on its behalf. In August its announcements page described the Project Professional Advanced Certification, in a pilot with selected organisations, with a three-stage path (active PMP, peer review at an accredited organisation and a proctored exam). That same page now shows APL and no longer mentions the old name.
The skeleton looks very similar, a prior certification, a step through an accredited organisation and an exam. But there are differences. APL also accepts the PgMP and the PfMP as a starting point, and the second step is no longer called peer review but evaluation program. It looks like the pilot’s evolution, and perhaps it is. As long as no PMI page writes it, it is an open question.
What is still unknown
PMI has not published which organisations are accredited, so there is no list where you can check whether your company already has the door open. Nor does it say whether there will ever be a way to apply as an individual. The page speaks of the requirements of the current release, and that wording leaves room for them to change, but it leaves room, it promises nothing.
What changes if you hold the PMP or are preparing for it
For anyone preparing for the exam today, nothing in the plan. APL starts where the PMP ends, and requires it to be active. What we said in August holds more firmly now that the requirement is written, because a rung that the next certification demands as its base does not lose value, it gains it.
The context PMI gives explains why it is building upwards. The announcement cites its Pulse of the Profession 2026 report, according to which 81 per cent of project professionals say projects have become more complex in recent years, and it estimates that up to 30 million additional project professionals will be needed by 2035.
If you already hold the PMP, APL is not the only path that goes up. There is the project office route we covered in the post on a PMO career, and the artificial intelligence specialisation we walked through in the post on going from the PMP to the PMI-CPMAI. The difference is that APL does not depend on you alone. It depends on your organisation having a program PMI accepts, and that conversation, if it interests you, starts inside and not on PMI’s website.
No voussoir names itself the keystone. The rest of the structure puts it there, once it knows how much weight it can bear.
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